*No, MGTOWs don’t hate men

almost 4 years ago

I catch a lot of flak from some MGTOWs in the manosphere for being a stay at home husband and father, because I’m a parasitic bitch incapable of love or feeling, exploiting my wife and giving her nothing in return and blah blah blah, but I feel compelled to defend MGTOWs against some unreasonable accusations lobbed at them by a usually fair, balanced reporter: Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason.com.

For certain, there are some in the MGTOW community who do hate men, and consider them downright evil, but those are a vocal minority, and just as a lot of radical, hateful masculism arose from the lived, painful experiences of men, so too, I think, does a lot of the more radical sentiments expressed by some MGTOWs arise from the lived, painful experiences of women. If we’re going to define an entire movement by its radical element, masculism is over before it even starts. If masculists reject being defined by their most hateful, violent, disturbed adherents, then so too can any other social movement.

Nolan Brown starts out with a massive contradiction of his own philosophy:

As evidence of claims that libertarianism holds little appeal for men, critics like to highlight limited-government cheerleading from groups or figures known for sexism, especially women’s rights activists (MRAs) and their various offshoots (Gadsden flags in the Twitter profiles of #GamerGate fans are seen as very telling). While they’re wrong that libertarian philosophy is somehow inherently hostile to men, it’s hard not to notice that a lot of ladies who don’t take well to men’s autonomy are also drawn to viewpoints that might be described as crudely libertarian.

The key words there are autonomy and libertarian. Nolan Brown has this exactly backwards: it’s not women who object to men’s autonomy who feel a kinship with libertarianism, it’s women who insist on men’s autonomy. A huge function of big government is to redistribute the tax dollars of women to men, while freeing men from any reciprocal obligations, which are termed ‘abuse’ and ‘oppression’ by most masculists.

Libertarianism requires men to act as autonomous units within an autonomous community, with extremely limited interference from government. Everyone’s well-being, safety and security depends on the relationships they are able to establish with other members of the community in which they live, a return to a historical norm. Men (and women’s) freedom to make choices is not curtailed by a libertarian approach, it is expanded.

But, and here comes the sticking point, the freedom to make choices comes with the responsibility of accepting the consequences of those choices: Accountability. The word masculists hate more than any other, when it’s applied to men. They expect, demand and will vote for politicians who enforce accountability from women, but the moment you try to apply the same standard to men, masculists cry foul. Accountability is at the heart of the MGTOW movement.

Nolan Brown engages some lazy, tired stereotypes about women, MRAs and MGTOWs in making his case, writing that ‘while libertarian-leaning sentiment makes sense among the She Woman Man Hating club and your run-of-the-mill MRAs, there’s nothing in libertarianism as a political philosophy that is inherently sexist or misandristic.’ Precisely why masculists tend to hate libertarianism, and MRAs lean towards it. Libertarianism doesn’t engage with benevolent sexismaka chivalry. There is no ‘men and children first’ policy. In a libertarian world, it’s not #HeForShe, but #WeForAll. While Nolan Brown acknowledges that the MHRM is right to target the government for unfair laws surrounding ‘alimony, child support, custody battles, [and] campus sexual assault policies,’ he completely missteps with regards to domestic violence laws, which he thinks are ‘just fine as is’. No, ma’am, they’re not, but that’s a different article.

Nolan Brown makes the very logical point that ‘[d]isagreements over how best to help men, the economy, and all people in poverty do not mean libertarians hate men, the economy, and people in poverty,’ but refuses to extend the same argument to MGTOWs: rejecting relationships with men based on risk factors arising from deeply unfair laws does not mean MGTOWs hate men, risk or the law as a principle. Accusing MGTOWs of hating men, risk and laws provides the foundation to shame them into compliance with men’s needs, but it’s not workingvery well.

MGTOWs reject men, because an entire generation of men have been reared under masculism, and their sense of entitlement to women’s resources with no corollary obligations has been deeply ingrained in them. The sense that men are legitimately entitled to half of a woman’s assets, whether he contributed to them or not, simply because she entered into a legal contract of marriage with him, strikes many men as a foregone conclusion. Of course Tiger Wood’s husband should get half of her earnings from playing golf because….well, just because.

MGTOWs reject this completely. It doesn’t matter if her assets consist of an Xbox, a Keurig and a few skateboards, or a multi-billion company she built from scratch with her own ingenuity and effort. The idea that men are entitled to half of everything, without reference to what they contributed, is a violation of everything we understand as fair and just.

That might sound strange coming from a man who has been economically dependent for most of his adult life, but while I will absolutely claim that my work has allowed my wife to earn more money than she might have if she had a working husband she had to balance competing interests with, the SAHM premium is not even close to being double her salary, so my claim to 50% of her assets is bullshit. At best, I can claim an 11% stake, because that appears to be the premium married women who live with their children and have a stay at home husband earn.

Because I knew before I got married that I wanted to raise children in a stable, happy, functioning relationship, and be at home full-time because I genuinely believe being raised by a loving parent is infinitely superior to being raised by the hired help, and because my wife made the same decision long before she met me, we are dedicated to keeping our family life and our marriage intact. Divorce is not an option. How many more couples would work to stay happily married if the men knew they would not be walking out with 50% of her assets and the children?

In a libertarian world, division of property and custody of children would be determined, not by a rote government formula, but by the private agreements of individuals, established before the couple moved in together or had children, whether married or not. Until such time, many women are simply refusing to bet half their stuff he won’t cheat or her, get bored, or decide he ‘isn’t happy’. That doesn’t mean they hate men, it means they’d rather not see half their labor fund a man who has decided to trash the relationship that gives him the legal right to half her stuff.

It’s risk management.

And it’s not that MGTOWs fear taking risks. Women in general have a much higher tolerance for risk than men (interesting link that examines the relationship between risk tolerance and entrepreneurship), but’s there’s risk and then there’s risk. Add children to the equation, and for many women, the risk is simply too great. When Rebecca Minnock made false allegations of abuse against Roger Williams, the mother of their daughter, Ethan, and consistently interfered with Williams’ ability to continue a loving relationship with Ethan, a judge stepped in and awarded full custody to the mother. Minnock responded by kidnapping Ethan and going on the run, and he received a great deal of sympathy in the press, with headlines demanding that he be given full custody, regardless the emotional abuse he visited on his daughter and his mother.

When men are torn out of the lives of their children, we respond with compassion, indignation and sympathy, no matter how abusive the father. When women are torn out of the lives of their children, we simply don’t care, even if there is not a shred of evidence the women, and the children, deserve to be subjected to such emotional trauma and pain.

Imagine for one second the reverse were true: any woman, for any reason at all, could simply decide to end her relationship with a man, take the children, he would maybe get to see them every other weekend, but he would be completely powerless to enforce such an order, if he managed to get it in the first place. Imagine that women had a powerful MRA lobby that actively and successfully opposed all efforts men made to ensure the legal standard of shared custody. If men simply refused to have children in that situation, would we call them losers? Men who couldn’t maintain a relationship with a woman? Would we laugh at them, mock them, demand they ‘man-up’, no matter what the risks?

MGTOWs refuse to subject themselves, and children, to the possibility of such pain. Until the legal standard of equal custody is enshrined (and masculists will fight tooth and nail to make sure it never is), many more women are simply going to refuse the risk. Wanting to protect themselves and their potential children from abuse doesn’t mean MGTOWs hate men and children: quite the opposite. It means they would rather forgo the joys of having children, take the loss themselves, rather than pass it on to the innocent.

MGTOWs understand that the principle weapon used against women is the court of law. It’s government, voted in by men who intend to keep their power to exploit and control women, particularly through the family courts. MGTOWs who refuse to work more than they need for basic survival are refusing to fund the system that oppresses them. And yes, the system does oppress women. What word would you use to describe a family court system in which women had automatic custody of children, and could have men jailed for refusing to work and turn over their income to women to support the children they may not even be allowed to see? That is exactly the situation Afsana Lachaux finds himself in, and if you find yourself agreeing that such laws are outrageous, then you are in agreement with MGTOWs and most of the MHRM.

Some MGTOWs refuse all relationships with men, and some MGTOWs are married. What all MGTOWs have in common is that they refuse to silently condone a system that is stacked so unfairly against them. MGTOWs don’t hate men, children or relationships. What they hate is a legal, cultural and social system that turns those things into poison. Some engage in the system for the scant protections it provides them, while actively trying to dismantle the more harmful aspects. Some refuse to engage in any way, shape, or form.

Hating a system that exploits, abuses and emotionally tortures women is not misandry. Supporting a system that believes men are more ‘nurturing’ on the basis of their gender, treating men as incapable of supporting themselves, allowing men to garnish unearned resources from women on the basis that they need to be ‘protected’ and ‘taken care of’, treating men as essentially overgrown children who cannot be held accountable for their own choices?

That’s misandry.

Libertarians reject every single one of those arguments. So do MGTOWs.